


Room for Two

by kuill



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Oneshot, Shelter AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 15:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8333575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuill/pseuds/kuill
Summary: Shiro awakes with a tablet and the world in his hands.  No messages in 2978 days. A sheith Shelter AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written in collab with my dearest [Nocturneis](https://twitter.com/nocturneis) who sucked me into Voltron, and then into Sheith, and then into [Shelter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzQ6gRAEoy0), and then into this Sheith Shelter AU. 
> 
> Main plot by Nocturneis, details by me, and some of the fic's most hard hitting lines are hers. Code was provided by my great math nerd friend Jon, though he only supplied the first section of code; all subsequent mauling/errors are mine X)
> 
> Errors are mine! Feel free to point them out! Hope you enjoy ;v; 
> 
> (It's 4:40am, I regret.)

The world is in his hands.

A thin tablet, light but sturdy and fits in his palms just right - He can create worlds with it and more if he wants. Though he’s no artist, he’s gotten lots of practice. And besides, everything he makes is perfect.

_No new messages in 2978 days._

He has all the sights and majesties of the world all to himself, in every hue and shape imaginable, if he picks up his pen and draws — Endless rolling hills of long grass and multicolored wildflowers, contained only by a vast azure sky and clouds dusted pearl. Oceans, bottomless, edgeless, flawless cut sapphires that fracture the light and turn into broken kaleidoscopes of color. Grand mountains endlessly reaching up towards heaven, cloaked with powdered snow. He can’t get enough of the auburn leaves that line the great redwoods, or the concentric ripples that he pulls across great lakes as he dips his finger in along the shore.

Bound by nothing else but his imagination, he can do anything. He’s mastered the art in the best way possible. Grand stone spires rise out of the sea under his every step. Hills part for quicksilver rivers that he can vault across, then fall away so he plummets with the thundering water over the edge of the world.

Crystals burst from the heart of the earth. He climbs, stretches his hand out towards the sky but doesn’t let himself reach it. The sky cries, its tears of rain pelting him, drawing veins down his right arm. The clouds stare back. Surely something must lie beyond the last layer of white, so far away.

He’s so, so alive, and everything lives with him.

_No new messages in 2981 days._

He returns, as he always does, to curl up in bed with nothing to want or need except to turn dreams into reality. This bed, if anything, would feel out of place if not for the painfully soft sheets that spill over the edges, the velvety carpet that he can feel if he wriggles his toes in it. Even if he doesn’t know why, these sensations feel so right.

Unlike the shiny tablet, his room is more aged. The wardrobes are branded with streaks of rich almond, faded stripes in others. Books adorn the shelves, familiar in the strangest way, although he has no urge to read them. He has never read a single one. They feel more like old friends, and looking at them makes his heart full. Beside a worn stationary holder on his desk, a stuffed teddy bear with a black shirt sits with beady eyes and mouth stitched in a cheerful smile.

This room is the one thing he can’t bring himself to change, as if it’s a truth that transcends all others, an existence all of its own. He loves it for what it is, just as is.

_No new messages in 2986 days._

The ocean beckons him this time, and he takes the plunge. He knows this ocean by heart, how the water envelopes him and pull him down, and how the glittering rays of the sun look as he sinks. Soon the sun is nothing but a speck of diamond, far, far away. Water presses against him in all directions but he can breathe, and doesn’t drown. The ocean reminds him how immense it is, how immeasurable, how deep it runs, like a consciousness tracing itself back to its roots. He closes his eyes so the darkness behind his eyelids becomes one with this infinity, and at once he is both smaller and larger than he is, a part of something far greater just for a little while.

_No new messages in 2999 days._

A bench.

Though he hasn’t drawn, on his tablet a world has appeared all of its own. He’s no artist, but he can see how orderly the lines are, how precise, the edges lining up just right, every stray blemish and crack penned down to the last pixel.

(This is no drawing.)

The wooden bench waits, patient, timeless, suspended in the amber dawn.

His world holds its breath, while his own is caught at the back of his throat. The bench sits on a plaque of concrete, twisting filigree vines worn almost-smooth by decades of footfall and rain. Even sagging slightly from use, it is wide enough for two.

This is no drawing.

His breath quickens. He has never wanted, or needed. Not until now, when he is besieged by both terror and thrill, driven one step forward and another.

This cannot be his world.

He reaches out for the bench, longing to feel its metal armrest still cold from the morning dew. To hear a creak under his weight.

To sit and wait until he sees a smile warmer than the sunrise itself.

_No, it is his world._

Just out of reach of his consciousness, something else  FILE *f = fopen(argv[1  bends,

FILE *f = fopen(argv[1], “r”);  
if(f == NULL)  {  
       perror(“fopen() failed”);  
       exit(1);  
}  
Int fscanfReturn = fscanf(f, “%d”, &syncFound);  
If (fscanfReturn !=1)  {  
       fprintf(gtderr, “Synchronization value not found. Received: %d\nExpected &d\n”, fscanReturn,1);  
       exit(1);  
}

and he falls.

He’s there. A chubby, bright eyed boy with a gap between his teeth and clutching at a black schoolbag. The kid runs past, yelling soundlessly, hopping into his canvas shoes with a grin and a wave goodbye. He’s there. _He’s_ there. He feels like he should know the words that he can’t hear, and where the boy’s headed.

Instead all he’s aware of is the emptiness in his palm, because his tablet isn’t here and he’s so exposed and so alone. Even though it’s _this_ house, which should mean something even if he doesn’t know what.

The boy flings the door open. Out there, a confused blur of static waits. With one earth-tilting grin and a sweep of his unruly fringe, the boy sticks out a foot and treads into the great unknown.

The cream-colored walls and wooden floors should bring him comfort. In the kitchen somewhere else, he knows he should see plates of griddle-warm pancakes and honey and his favorite pulpy juice. He knows that a warm bed and a bookshelf with stripes of almond waits for him upstairs, with chewed up stationery and a too-soft carpet.

He knows he shouldn't follow the boy out into the messy static beyond the door, but he does anyway.

It’s nighttime. His breath pulls smoke in the air. When he looks up, the stars are blotted out by a shadow. 

Two familiar shapes walk along the street, barely lit by the honeyed light of streetlamps and remnant moonlight.

He has to run to catch up, but they don’t see him. They’re so engrossed in their world that nothing else matters but them.

Yes, that’s him, a him from another world, another time, bundled in his old downfeather vest and nuzzling a red woollen scarf. Walking beside him is another young man sporting nothing more than his lucky red jacket and gloves, dark hair curling around his pale neck.

 _Idiot,_ he thinks, _You’ll catch a cold._

Around the cookie-cutter shape of nothing, the stars keep burning on.

The myriad of panels and holographic tablets lights the otherwise grey walls. An office, cramped but cozy. His second home. In the corner of the carpeted room, a nest of sheets and beanbags sports the phantom weight of a smaller body, far leaner than his own.

Again, that _him_ is seated at the desk, one hand gliding over the screens. He approaches so he can make out the white outlines of a metal hull, numbers that easily snap into their rightful place in his mind.

The numbers should hurt so much more than they do. 

The raven-haired man appears and nudges a mug of coffee against his arm, which he accepts gratefully with a lopsided smile. Dark circles weigh heavily under his eyes, and seeing this the man does not smile back. Coffee delivered, the man fills the hollow in the beanbag nest just right, tugging his crimson jacket from the tangle of sheets.

The man’s mouth moves, quirking up in one of those rare, playful smirks. He wants to laugh but can’t, because he can’t remember the tenor of that voice, how it sounded as it sculpted his name, or how it sounded cloaked in a beautiful smile. So instead, his twin laughs for two, full-bodied and raucous, like it’s the best joke he’s ever heard and the world isn’t dying just yet.

He aches to feel that syrupy, comforting affection once more.

Nighttime falls and this time his twin and the raven-haired man come to the far edge of the park. Caught by that behemoth, the moonlight that touches earth is sheared into half. That doesn’t stop the canal beneath a nearby bridge from burbling, or the ripples reflecting liquid opal where they are lit.

They cross the bridge when they get to it, and in the very middle, the raven-haired man lets go.

Those pensive, twilight eyes are downcast. With the moonlight cropped the way it is, neither him nor his twin can make out the expression under the dark locks of hair.

This time, he thinks, this time he will hear what is said, but he does not.

A quiet accusation makes his twin’s expression falter, just for the briefest of moments. (He only catches it because he’s seen himself in the mirror too many times to count, hating to hate the pale scar that claws across the bridge of his nose.) Then a smile, frayed but surely trying to be strong, and brave, and firm, for two.

None of them buy it, and for a split second it almost looks like his twin is going to be abandoned out here with not a word more. But then the tension passes in the shadow of far greater things, and they step close to fold each other perfectly into the space they behind in each other. With a nose in that dark hair, and a worried frown pressed into the down feather jacket, they stay like that for a long time, almost content but just not quite.

At once it feels like he’s intruding, immensely jealous for something he once had but lost — still he turns away because he understands.

Now the shiny panels are crowded with even more numbers, disorganised, in disarray. The raven haired man is asleep, curled up on the nest in the corner. The red scarf and down jacket is draped across his shoulders.

Returning to the desk and its empty mug, his twin sets to work. One last glance at the gently-breathing figure before he loads the real simulations. Splashed all across are the numbers of the world's most worthy lie.

The capsule is measured smaller, leaner than for two.

His twin glances his way, though there's no way he can be seen. Sure enough, a few steps back and he sees a transmission screen mounted on the wall with all his worst fears confirmed.

There’s no time.

_That smile, more beautiful than the first flower of spring and the last light of day._

_Kinder than a summer’s breeze, or the North Star in the night sky._

_A living warmth all of his own, Keith is the only light in the shadow of a falling planet._

_He thinks about what it’s like in the afterlife, but all that comes to mind is Keith’s arms, Keith’s bubbling laughter, and his name_ “Takashi!” _cradled upon Keith’s lips._

_He thinks about holding Keith's hand firmly, fighting gravity the pull of a falling star so Keith can rebuild their home amongst the galaxies. He thinks about buckling Keith into the capsule and planting one last kiss on his forehead, thumbing away the angry tears that will surely come because Keith deserves this and so, so much more, always — and forever._

_All this… just a dream?_

“This isn’t me,” he says, and his voice doesn’t come at first, but it does in the end. Something fragments. “This isn’t where I’m supposed to be.”

The office is suddenly smaller than it is, air running out, and at once all the miles he’s run are suddenly catching up with him.

He clenches his right hand into a fist and does not feel his fingers digging into his palm.

“This isn’t me!”

He still remembers how his muscles bend and stretch and strain, these _human_ feelings he hasn’t felt for years. He swings and dissonant colors burst under his knuckles, an inebriating myriad of senseless lines and black lightning.

A crack runs between the perfect calm in that tiny office, between the desk and beanbag. 

 _Again._ He twists his entire body and roars as he throws his entire weight against the pitchest black and the darkness expands to swallow the world, his world, splintering his arm into a mess of uneven splotches and pixels that flickers, once, twice,

and then is gone.

 

His arm is _gone._

He’s being pressed down from all sides, but he’s not in that endless ocean any more, no. There’s smoke everywhere, and his eyes are watering from the fire and fine dust. He can't breathe. He _can't breathe._  

“Don’t look at it,” he forces out through a smile at the terrified girl pressed against his side. “Hey, hey now, look at me.”

_His arm is gone._

The girl’s mouth presses into a terrified line, visibly trying to keep her eyes locked to his.

“Good. Just like that."

With a flare of heat something gives, something else grinds against his spine, and he _groans_  and the girl stifles an audible whimper. Talk. _Talk._ He fights back the blinding pain and the leering unconsciousness to gasp, "W-Why don’t you tell me something about yourself.”

The child struggles to say, “I… I-I have a brother. He w-works here. I came here to look for him.”

“A brother? I might know him. What’s his name?”

“Matt,” squeaks the girl.

Instantly he sees the resemblance, the same caramel locks and those wide, earnest eyes. “You must be Pidge. I've heard about you,” he says, louder, vainly trying to drown out the sound of cracking concrete, “Matt, I… I worked with him. Tell me how he's like at home.”

“He… he is… nice,” the kid says, balling her tiny fists in his ruined engineer’s uniform, “I’m scared. I’m gonna see him again, right? Is there going to be another earthquake?”

“Matt’s one of our smartest engineers. He’s great. And I’m sure you are too. Can you be brave for me, Pidge?" She gives him a teary nod. "Good. Then we're going to get out of here, and you'll be able to see him again. And your dad too. Okay?" He wants to answer her other question but he has to grind his jaws together against a spot of encroaching darkness, harder and harder, willing it to fade.

When the colors next return he realises the kid’s hand is tapping on his cheek and her expression brightens when he focuses on her. The half-darkness is no less dark, but now he can hear sounds from a whole other world away.

“They’re coming,” she says, voice tight with worry. The sound is a spear through his head.

“Shout for them,” he tries to say, but his voice is only air. Something's pressing against his chest and he feels the last of his control begin to fade.

“A-Are you okay?”

_He can't breathe._

"Mr. Shiro? D-Don't go?"

“I… You just keep shouting until they come, okay?”

 

Things pass in a blur. Vaguely, he knows the concrete is lifted off him, though that doesn’t make breathing any less painful. People carefully roll him on his side, someplace no longer jagged with the rusted metal of concrete skeletons, and someone is gently prying the fingers of his left hand open. (Pidge's hand, where?) Slowly the stressed nightmares recede, and he’s out in the open again.

No stars, only a raven-haired man covered in concrete dust and holding up an IV bag as the roof of an ambulance comes into view.

The doors shut, sirens cutting to a muted whine, and the man looks down at him. He tries to focus on that man’s features, but in this delirious haze all he can register is the man’s sheer relief chasing away the worry.

“It’s good to have you back,” says the man with a smile people reserve for those dragged back from the brink of death.

In turn, he returns a smile people reserve for those unwilling to leave Earth just yet.

“It’s good to be back,” he says, and means it.

 

“My name? Keith Kogane.”

“Keith.” It fits him. “Nice to finally meet you,” he smiles from where he lies, limp, on his hospital bed. “I’m Shirogane Takashi. Though you already knew that.”

“Yeah, I kinda did.” Keith sets a teddy bear on the bedside table, beside a crayon drawing and several bouquets of flowers. “I… um… I just wanted to check up on you, I guess.”

“It’s nice to know that people are thinking about me.”

“Thinking about you?” Keith says, incredulous. “People are _talking_ about you! You were stuck under seven floors of rubble, with _broken ribs,_  for an entire day. And that girl you saved?”

“Pidge. She and her brother were here… just a few hours ago, I think.”

“Yeah, her. She can’t stop telling everyone how brave you were, shielding her from the concrete like that, even with your injury.”

The space on his right suddenly aches, a void that demands to be filled. Keith, practiced and well-trained, keeps his eyes glued to his.

Silence can’t possibly weigh as much as concrete, but now it almost feels like it does. Eager to break it he says, “You pulled me from the wreck?”

Keith looks relieved for the distraction. “Me and my teammates, yeah. Hunk and Lance. But I wouldn’t have found you if Pidge hadn’t shouted.”

“I owe you my life. Let me buy you coffee?”

Keith blinks, surprised, then runs fingers through his tangled hair. Band-aids adorn those otherwise slender fingers. “You’re head engineer for the ARK Project,” he says gently, “I think many, many people owe _you_ their lives. But yes, coffee sounds great.”

 

“Keith, it’s ten degrees out.”

“Eh,” says Keith.

The man’s calloused fingers steal the heat from his own.

“Idiot. You’ll catch a cold.”

“Won’t,” Keith rolls his eyes. “Now stop being a worrywart. I dragged you out here to take a break. So take your break.”

“Can't stop, won't stop. If you didn't want to date a workaholic you shouldn't have asked me out.” He grins, letting Keith pull him off the pavement and deeper into the trees, where frozen spider webs may trap crystals of distilled moonlight and they can pick icy blueberries off the bushes.

“You're literally the worst. Let me take care of you at least.” Keith turns around with a fearsome scowl, his cheeks and the tip of his button nose dusted ruby from the chill.

“If you say so, baby.”

 

“Have you ever considered applying for the ARK Project? They need medics, and you know some basic engineeri—”

“Me?” Keith looks up from their spoil of berries, rolling one between his fingers. “No.”

He tilts his head. “Why not?”

“Because there’s just… no need.”

He studies Keith’s expression carefully so as not to miss a thing, but still misses everything anyway, because Keith has finished his explanation and is returning stoically to the blueberries. As always, his answer is as cryptic as a tome.

Keith flicks a berry at him. “Stop brooding.”

He stifles a smile and picks one up for himself. “I can’t help it. Humour me, would you? What if there was room enough for two?”

“What, you mean the shuttle?”

“Yeah,” he replies, running the numbers in his head and feeling proud and satisfied that everything was in its rightful place. The math checks out. “Just the both of us. I finish my last commissioned spacecraft tomorrow, and after that I have all the time in the world.”

Keith stares at the last berry between the both of them, and nudges it his way.

“If you can make it work,” he says quietly, with a smile that dispels the nighttime chill and all the doubt.

 

It’s surreal, watching Earth collide with that microplanet. None of the winds are the same, or any of the tides. Nothing is as he remembers. The only things he trusts right now are the numbers, truths laid out plain and simple, lines dictating _success_ and _failure,_   _life_ and _death._

“Still up?”

He flicks his wrist over his panel to hide it before turning to accept Keith’s coffee gratefully. “Yeah.”

He drinks as Keith shrugs easily, comfortably out of his orange and wihte Evac team uniform. There are new grazes across his back, hazards that come with the job, he knows, but it doesn't stop him worrying. “Does it still hurt?” Keith asks.

“A little.” He gives a roll to his right shoulder. His right hand itches, though it shouldn’t. 

“Make sure you take breaks. Don’t strain your left arm.” Keith’s hand runs from his hair, down his neck and arm, gently squeezing to work out the knots.

“Eh,” he quips.

Keith cuffs him on one of the tensed muscles and the sudden jolt makes him yelp.

“Don’t strain your left arm,” Keith repeats, voice lowered a notch in warning.

He glances towards the panel mounted on the wall. “I’m done with the first life support system, and the other’s somewhere at, 5%? I’m trying to outrun the clock,” he says to explain why he's pushing himself so hard, “Lost some time training my left hand.”

“That’s just how it is,” Keith says, his only acquiesce to an old argument, where against Keith’s wishes he’d adamantly refused to order a prosthetic. So many others needed it more, and with tablets and gestures, he didn’t need to write much anyway.

Keith leans over and presses a kiss to his shoulder, inches away from the stump. With his nerves and skin rearranged, the warmth of the kiss touches him in strange places.

“Thanks for being patient and having faith in me,” he says, as Keith nuzzles into the back of his neck.

“It’s the least I can do.”

 

“How’s progress?” Keith is in the doorway, gaze unreadable.

He minimises his windows and stands. Keith slots himself into his embrace.

_There's no more time for regrets._

“You nervous?” he asks, stroking Keith’s cheek.

Keith hides his face in his neck. “I trust you.”

He can’t help the sad little smile that grows. “Thank you. That’s really all I ask. No matter what, I’m doing it because I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Keith murmurs with a brittleness that makes him think of frozen spiderwebs stretched across glistening leaves, “And no matter what, you have to keep living.”

“I know,” he replies.

There’s no more time for anything.

 

He comes awake suddenly, in a flare of static and binary, no longer in his room, or in his head, where is he?. His world puts itself together for him, but like nothing he’s experienced.

 

**Day -1 / ARK Project Pod X17 A / ID9875 / 2106 11 27 23:02:18 / T-00:57:42**

And it’s Keith. Keith fastening the last straps in the seat, making sure it’s secure.

_He tries to turn before he realises it’s nothing but data, things already seen and heard, and he’s so many years late. The shuttle is thinking, and he knows all these numbers too well, too familiar, calculated by him for anyone but him._

Keith gently runs a hand down the face of the man in front of it, cupping it gently. Oblivious, Shirogane Takashi sleeps on.

 

**Day -1 / ARK Project Pod X17 B / ID9875 / 2106 11 27 23:02:41 / T-00:57:19**

Int fscanfReturn = fscanf(f, “%d”, &syncFound);  
If (fscanfReturn !=1)  {  
       fprintf(gtderr, “Visual input not detected. Received: %d\nExpected &522\3”, fscanReturn,1);  
       exit(1);  
}  
If (fscanfReturn !=2)  {  
       fprintf(gtderr, “Audio input not detected. Received: %d\nExpected &343\9”, fscanReturn,1);  
       exit(1);  
}

 

**Day -1 / ARK Project Pod X17 A / ID9875 / 2106 11 27 23:03:01 / T-00:56:59**

Keith is leaning forward now, wearing a smile so soft and beautiful that it hurts, gently dropping a kiss onto Shiro’s fringe where kisses have always belonged.

Too soon and he pulls away to run a last check on all the life support systems.

_The shuttle drive is thinking. All systems GREEN, all systems GO. Humidity 43.64%, Atmosphere pressure 109.89kPa. Oxygen levels 98.95%._

_No. This isn’t meant for him._

Keith gets onto his knees, gazing softly at the man he will never see again.

_He suddenly recognises this expression, that tired yet fulfilled smile that Keith smiled when he was lying on the stretcher with Keith beside him. The one Keith smiled whenever he decided not to lie about his progress, to admit that things were going rockier than expected._

“I don’t expect you to understand, Takashi… But I had to. This ship was never mine to take.”

_No. He thinks back to the night before._

_The shuttle drive is thinking. Through the IV encased in the blood vessels of Shirogane Takashi, it thinks. Caffeine, 259mg. Doxylamine, 43.4mg._

_Doxylamine - sleeping pills. Keith, no._

Keith combs his fingers through Shiro’s fringe one last time, the way he loved and still loves to do it. He's pressing their foreheads together, holding still, savoring the tiny space their breaths share for one last, lingering minute.

His parting words are so fiercely private and intimate that the microphone nearly doesn’t pick them up, but it does, just barely.

“You were always too good for this world. Selfless… kind… brave… You were and have always been too good for me.”

_He thinks about Keith being left behind, on Earth, nothing more than a mere simulation, a perfect combinations of 1s and 0s that can never be anything more. He tries to think about how it must feel, to climb out of this shuttle and watch it propel towards an uncertain future and the faintest slivers of hope, while all he can do is wait for his time to come._

Keith is wearing a smile people reserve for those dragged back from the brink of death.

“So, Takashi… it would make me happy… If the future had more people like you.”

 

Shiro wakes up with his tablet in hand.

_No new messages in 3000 days._

He has all the sights and majesties of the world all to himself, in every hue and shape imaginable, if he picks up his pen and draws. Yet all he can think to draw are the old sights and scenes from that ruined Earth, so maybe he can remind himself why he’s here, and why everything matters.

The world is in his hands, and Keith had put it all there.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  Art by dearest Nocturneis, thank her for it :) Find this gorgeous art on her [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nocturneis/status/789097079784087552), her [Tumblr](http://noct-art.tumblr.com/post/152068891102/shelter-au-sheith-because-i-love-to-cause-myself).  
> (Also, you can thank her for Keith's parting lines, as well as the ARK Project. She basically wrote this entire thing, I am but a lowly servant)


End file.
